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A brief summary first:The language is a High German development of Latin. After those sound changes have nicely messed up the Latin declensions I have three cases (direct, genetive and dative), two genders (masc & fem) and two numbers (sing/plural).
The definite article may come form ILLE, or maybe from IPSE (I haven't decided yet) but that doesn't really affect the declension. I end up with the following (based on ILLE, change the /l/ to /s/ for IPSE):
Ms Fs Mp Fp
Dir /le:/ /la:/ /li:/ /le:/
Gen /lai/ /lai/ /lu:re/ /la:r/
Dat /li:/ /li:/ /li:/ /li:/
No problems with the direct or genetive cases - except perhaps Dir. Mp -
but, as you can see the dative all ends up in the same place, regardless of
gender or number, due to a loss of final /s/ at some point earlier in the
development.
I am minded to lose the gender distinction for the plurals, for no other reason than German has done so and if I do the same it simplifies the problem a little. I can also use the original accusative rather than nominative form for the direct plural, which leaves me here:
M F P
Dir /le:/ /la:/ /lu:/
Gen /lai/ /lai/ /lu:re/
Dat /li:/ /li:/ /li:/
Any idea how I could mark that dative plural? In some declensions it will be
apparent in the noun itself due to the original -IBVS ending which collapses
to /-p/, but not all. Extend -IBVS to all declensons by analogy (not ideal,
as I really don't like the way that word final <b> looks when I do have
it!)? Use something other than ILL�S (what?), add some kind of clitic to the
noun to ensure it has a distinctive ending in all declensions (I added SVVM
to all gen. sing early on for similar reasons) - what though?
Any suggestions gratefully received! Henrik, any suggestions from the land of the frozen vines?Pete.